


an entourage of blades

by falterth



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falterth/pseuds/falterth
Summary: Sasuke thinks he can learn to live like this, with Naruto and Sakura and Iruka-sensei all under the roof, and there are knives around his throat but they aren’t so menacing anymore, aren’t so sharp and prodding andurgent.He thinks back toever since,and he shrugs because he is not indifferent, no, but it does not affect him so much anymore.It is not all bad.





	an entourage of blades

The knives, which are twenty in number, more than most shinobi _ever_ have—save for his brother who had about a hundred, and _had_ is the key word—fan out around him like a collar, and give him _no time_ to think.

He used to have two.

Eventually they prod him toward a boy named Uzumaki Naruto, whose smile hurts to look at because it’s so painfully fake. Naruto has four wickedly sharp knives curled around his throat. They are so close to the skin that Sasuke almost reaches out to take hold of them and _pull them away._  

Sasuke hesitates. The knives swirl threateningly and inch closer to the soft flesh of his throat.

“C’mon,” he says, at long last, and offers a hand to the boy with two scraped knees and a crooked tooth.

He thinks about the person that did this, thinks of another boy—tall, with shoulders that will be very broad indeed, with hair so dark that it is almost black, and eyes so green that they look like the leaves of the village itself were wrung out and dripped into his head. 

Thinks of a boy with three knives dancing around his neck.

He thinks of the boy, and one of the knives hums with excitement, turning outward and pointing to the north.

“What’s with that number though?” Uzumaki asks him. 

Sasuke snarls and drags him home so he can use what little medical knowledge he has to patch him up.

 

* * *

 

Truth is, Sasuke doesn’t _know._

 

* * *

 

The next day he wakes up on the floor. Uzumaki is in his bed, passed out like a rock.

Nineteen knives wake up with him. 

Uzumaki has three pointed quietly at his neck. They seem to stare at Sasuke.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, they lead him to a girl named Haruno Sakura, whose ten knives are lusterless and dark. As soon as she sees him, ten become nine, and nineteen become eighteen, and her eyes widen. 

“I—” she says, and then, “You? You’re—”

She must understand more about this than he does. 

He drags her from the ruins of a crumbled, ashy house that looks like it’s been burned down for _years,_ and he orders her to come with him and buy new clothes and she cries and tells him _no no NO I need to stay with my moms,_ but in the end they visit just about every kunoichi store and Sakura comes out laden with bags of clothing.

An hour later, they’re in one of the least damaged houses of the Uchiha compound and a clean Haruno Sakura has just stepped out of the bathroom, steam cloud billowing out from behind the open door. Her face is pink, and her arms look scrubbed raw and half-boiled.

But she’s smiling.

Sasuke asks her to show him to the graveyard, and when Naruto—and it’s Naruto now, not Uzumaki—comes along with them, three become two.

Sasuke guesses that they’re stuck with him, for better or for worse.

 

* * *

 

Sasuke finds him in the civilian district of Konoha. 

The boy leaves with a warning—and Sasuke will never say exactly what he _did_ to him to incite such fear—but the thing is that he comes home with seventeen knives following him, and Naruto, who arrives at the compound even later than Sasuke does, looks strangely knowing.

Sasuke doesn’t dwell.

 

* * *

 

They enter the academy, a package of three, just as the leaves after which the village is named begin the slow turnover from green to red and brown.

They haven’t been slacking off in their training, so skill-wise, they’re placed in an academy class with a bunch of kids their own age.

“About time,” Shikamaru—who’s a Nara and a lazy ass, as far as Sasuke is concerned—mutters after Naruto and Sakura introduce themselves.

He’s got just the one knife.

Sasuke wonders how important it is.

Sasuke doesn’t need to tell anyone his name; after all, he’s coming _back._  

Umino Iruka, whose three knives are as short as his temper and as sharp as his tongue, watches in amazement as they all simultaneously fall to the ground, lifeless as rocks and just as heavy, and moments later they melt into the polished wooden floor of the academy classroom.

He looks at the three of them.

“Well,” he says, and swallows. “We’ll talk about this after class. Take your seats, please.”

They sit together, three birds of a feather, none of them knowing parents and heads full of a dream trebled, and they think: what on earth could this man need from us? What on earth could we give this man? Why on _earth?_

 

* * *

 

“You three don’t have parents?” Iruka-sensei asks.

“Dead in a house fire,” Sakura says, and her little voice cracks in the middle and Sasuke immediately crowds closer on her left, and Naruto presses in on her right, and the both of them wrap their arms around her and feel her _shake._

“You know what happened to mine,” Sasuke says. The fire that he’d once kept in his voice is dead and gone. He wonders where it is now, and if it will ever come back.

“I—” Naruto begins, and he can’t finish but it’s enough because from the way Iruka-sensei stiffens.

Their teacher shifts around on his feet nervously before asking. 

“How would you three like a home where you don’t have to fend for yourselves all the time?”

 

* * *

 

Naruto stares. “ _Really?"_  

Sakura shuffles her feet, and says, “But I already—”

And Sasuke tells them both not to worry, says to Naruto that it isn’t a prank, says to Sakura that nobody will _ever_ replace her moms.

So in the end, it’s a “sure,” and a hesitant “okay,” and Iruka-sensei is off to the administration building to pick up the correct paperwork.

“Try to get in my way,” he promises, not speaking to any of the three but rather to some unknown authority, “just _try_ it.”

 

* * *

 

Moving in with Iruka-sensei does not go as expected, for everyone but Sasuke.

For the one part, he’d sooner die than give up his clan’s land, and for another, Iruka-sensei’s apartment is tiny, so the only logical option is to make _him_ move in with _them._

“Only if you three stay in the same house as me. Adoption papers have only _just_ been finalized, and as much as I trust—or don’t trust—you little rascals to fend for yourselves, I _do_ need to keep a watch on you. And I also need to get my other documents in order if I’m going to be living here.”

Sasuke nods, and opens the gate for Iruka-sensei to come into the compound.

Their teacher’s next words die in his mouth and are replaced with, “ . . . and this place is a _dump,_ Sasuke, we need to work on cleaning this up.”

Sasuke pouts, but it’s actually kind of true. Ever since—

Ever since, he’s only put in the effort to keep his _own_ house clean, and Naruto and Sakura are absolutely no help with that.

“And,” Iruka-sensei continues, when they’re safely in Sasuke’s house and he’s put down his blanket and pillow and groceries, “I hope you’re okay with spending more time in the Academy. You’ve missed out on a good two years of education, and Naruto and Sakura about three. If you want to graduate together, I’m sure something can be arranged.”

Sasuke sniffles.

“Sasuke?” Iruka-sensei asks, and he sounds so _concerned._

This is when the dam breaks.

It’s just—it's just that it’s been so _long_ since an adult has cared for him like this, been so long since anyone save Naruto and Sakura have even given him the time of _day,_ and he—he reaches out to grab Iruka-sensei’s hand, and the man lets him.

 

* * *

 

Two years pass. 

Sasuke feels older than he should be. 

When he looks into the mirror and sees seventeen staring back at him, a number that hasn’t changed in a very long time, taking up so much of his reflection that he thinks they must be him, he feels like an old machine, feels his gears grinding slowly to a halt.

And then he remembers that he _has_ now, has where there once was none, and that the ghost of three years gone by is barely a whisper in the room anymore.

“Sasuke,” Sakura calls out to him, from where she is in the kitchen, “do you want spicy curry? Iruka-sensei’s trying to make it mild and I _hate_ mild—”

Naruto butts into the conversation, and his voice is so loud that Sasuke, from where he is standing in front of the sink in the bathroom, doesn’t even have to strain to hear it.

“Oh yeah? Well I _love_ mild curry, so _there—”_

“Both of you, be quiet,” Iruka-sensei orders, and it’s Iruka-sensei, who has been with them through thick and thin and has held Sasuke close to his chest on the worst of the worst and who has taken Sakura to her mothers’ graves countless times and who has shielded Naruto from glares and insults more times than Sasuke can even _remember._

Sasuke thinks he can learn to live like this, with Naruto and Sakura and Iruka-sensei all under the roof, and there are knives around his throat but they aren’t so menacing anymore, aren’t so sharp and prodding and _urgent._  

He thinks back to _ever since,_ and he shrugs because he is not indifferent, no, but it does not affect him so much anymore.

“I like it spicy,” Sasuke calls out, and on his way out of the bathroom he flicks the lights off.

It is not all bad.


End file.
